


People You Meet

by Mayarene Rose (Paradise_of_Mary_Jane)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Anxiety, Friendship, Gen, M/M, OC centric, POV Outsider, Retirement AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-10-24 14:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10743471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradise_of_Mary_Jane/pseuds/Mayarene%20Rose
Summary: On Yuri Plisetsky’s first day at Grove High, he kicks Matt Johnson so hard in the balls that it actually sends him to the hospital.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is based off of [Skygem's post](http://skygemspeaks.tumblr.com/post/157153215578/you-know-running-in-the-same-vein-as-yuuris). I'm late to the party but whatever, hahaha. And apparently, I'm incapable of writing short things now, hahaha. Anyway, this will be in two parts (I actually haven't started the second part yet and I have no idea when I'll manage to finish it since it's exam season over here). Okay, so I tagged this as Otayuri but there's like two lines of Otayuri in this part. I plan to make them more prominent in the next one.
> 
> Also, my knowledge of American high schools is comprised of high school musical and grease so if there are inaccuracies, please forgive me.
> 
> Okay, that's all. Enjoy!

On Yuri Plisetsky’s first day at Grove High, he kicks Matt Johnson so hard in the balls that it actually sends him to the hospital.

 Not that Matt Johnson didn’t deserve it. Really, in Jamie’s opinion, someone should have kicked that guy in the nuts since second grade. He’s the type of bully that should only exist in movies but was somehow transferred into the real world as punishment for normal people. She would’ve done it herself, too, if she wasn’t too busy not doing anything with her life.

 Yuri Plisetsky—Jamie didn’t even know his name at the time. She only knew him as the new kid with a big, fancy car who came to classes in the middle of September—had walked in, all combat boots and terrifying death glare mixed with long, braided, blonde hair and a glittery, tiger print shirt. Of course, in typical high school movie fashion Matt, the ‘official’ school bully, had immediately zeroed in on him.

 “Oi!” Matt shouts. “You!”

 Yuri Plisetsky freezes in his steps. Apparently, he can sense the hostility in Matt’s voice, not that that’s hard to do. He turns slowly towards Matt, with a glare that could probably slice Matt up in five minutes.

 “What?” he says.

 “Do you put flowers in your hair new kid? Dance ballet? Wear a dress, maybe?”

 Yuri Plisetsky smirks, regarding him in a way one might regard an insect. He is nearly five inches shorter than Matt but it doesn’t seem to matter.

 “I dance ballet,” he says. “What’s it to you?”

 “What?” Matt howls in laughter, like the asshole that he is. “Like a fucking fa—”

 Like Jamie said, he really deserves getting kicked in the nuts.

 It happens in a split second. One moment, Matt was looming over Yuri Plisetsky’s small frame, the next, Matt is on the ground, clutching his crotch, tears in his eyes. Yuri Plisetsky’s right leg is raised in a perfect straight line, posture perfect.

 Ballet, huh. Makes sense. Not the way Jamie thought she’d get up close and personal with a ballerina (ballerino? Jamie doesn’t know much about this sort of thing) but okay. Jamie will never say a bad word against ballerinas ever again.

 He lowers it slowly, glaring at the entire corridor.

 “There. Is. Nothing. Wrong. With. Being. Gay,” he says in a deadly whisper. “Moron.” He has a thick Russian accent, the kind you only see in mobster movie villains.

 It wouldn’t be an inaccurate description, Jamie thinks, with the way Matt is currently sobbing into the floor.

 He walks towards his classroom without another word.

The hallway is silent for a solid two minutes after that, pierced only by the sound of Matt keening in pain.

 Well, at least the guy deserved it.

 

\--

 

Matt does not return for the next day. Mostly because he’s still recovering from the number Plisetsky did on him. Rumor has it that he had to stay overnight at the hospital. Rumor also has it that he’s not coming back, period. That his parents have transferred him to a school in the next district. Rumor also has it that his parents are not planning to sue.

 Needless to say that Yuri Plisetsky became the easy subject of gossip.

 Jamie unofficially learns his name through Marianne who learned it from John who learned it from Nataly who learned it from Asiya who had Honors Lit with Yuri Plisetsky.

 “You were there weren’t you, Jamie?” Carla asks during first period. “Is it—”

 “Yes it’s true,” Jamie says tiredly. This is the fifth time that people had asked her about it. She’s pretty sure that half the school had witnessed what she’s taken to calling ‘The Incident’ but the other half, apparently, has chosen her to confirm the rumors. It is rapidly getting old. “The little blond guy kicked Matt in the nuts and Matt curled up in a ball to cry.”

 “Do you think he’s part of the Russian mob?”

 It’s a stupid, ridiculous question. And it’s a question that Jamie’s been asking herself for an entire day now. She still remembers Yuri Plisetsky’s low, guttural voice, coupled with that thick Russian accent.

 But he also dances ballet, apparently. And wears his hair in a braid. She never associated ballet with the Russian mob before but who the fuck knows what goes on in Russia. It’s a whole different world that’s an entire ocean away.

 “Hell if I know,” she says.

 Carla opens her mouth, closes it again, dumbfounded. Really, what else is there to say? Jamie turns away and back to her empty notebook and that had been the end of it.

 The teacher comes in a few moments later, anyway.

 

\--

 

She officially learns his name in third period: Honors Chemistry.

 He has a hood over his blond hair as he introduces himself, hands shoved in his pocket, with a glare that could probably kill. He tells the class that he’s Yuri Plisetsky, that he’s sixteen, that he transferred from St. Petersburg. He tells them that he dances and figure skates, eyes just daring them to laugh.

 Nobody laughs. Everybody’s too busy quaking under their desks.

 The teacher nods at him when he’s finished and tells him to take his seat. Jamie realizes with a jolt that the seat next to her is the only empty seat.

 Shit shit shit.

 She is too young to die.

 Yuri Plisetsky drops onto the seat. The seat right beside her. He does not look murderous but Jamie does not trust him at all.

 “Hey,” she says. “Jamie Aquino, nice to meet you.” The teacher begins writing on the board but it’s too complicated for Jamie to try and discern.

 Yuri Plisetsky ignores her and okay. Okay. Jamie can deal with that. Being ignored is much, much better than getting bodily injured. Okay. She can do this. Just have to get through this class and… Get through it tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, and—

 Shit. Jamie is so fucking screwed.

 She turns her attention back to the teacher. Chemistry has never been her strong suit and she cannot bring herself to care about the long string of symbols that mean absolutely nothing to her.

 Still, her parents conditioned her from a young age to have a mortal fear of any sort of failure, so she dutifully takes notes. She can study it later. As long as she can get it down. She writes the formulas down in the way one would write in a foreign language: write and write and write and write. Who the fuck even cares about what they mean?

 It’s twenty minutes later when she notices that Yuri Plisetsky is not taking notes. It takes another five minutes for her to notice that it’s because he’s fast asleep, head pillowed on his desk.

 And the thing is, Jamie is a little shit herself, or at least she likes to think she is. And she really cannot stand people slacking off in class. So with that combination… Well, it’s  not like she thought it through but…

 She pokes him with a pen. Hard.

 Then she remembers who he is and immediately regrets her decision.

 She is too young to die.

 “Eh?” he mutters, looking around to her. He is not glaring at her so that’s something.

 “You fell asleep,” Jamie says.

 I know,” Yuri Plisetsky says and promptly closes his eyes again. Jamie does not know what to do with this. She turns back to her notes.

 She’s pretty sure that the teacher turns their way three times and  has probably spotted Yuri Plisetsky openly napping on his desk. The teacher says nothing, just continues teaching. It is apparently too much to ask that they have a five minute break where the teacher can call Yuri Plisetsky out for sleeping in her class and Jamie’s head can stop aching.

 She wonders why she even took the class. She already has enough AP classes to keep her in hell for the rest of the year. She really did not need to add chemistry to the list.

 Then she remembers that, right, her mother told her to. Because a background in chemistry is good if you’re taking Medicine and her mother wants her to take Medicine. She also still thinks Jamie wants to be a doctor and Jamie does not have the heart to tell her that if she goes in that direction, she will end up murdering someone or dropping out. Maybe both.

 So really, she’s has no choice but to take a class she hates for the rest of the year. Things could not possibly get worse.

 So of course, the moment she thinks that, a worse thing happens.

 Seven minutes before the bell rings, the teacher says,

 “Alright, class, For your final report, that will be worth twenty percent of your grade, you will be working in pairs—

 The class perks up and tenses at the same time, which is a strange combination that is apparently possible. Pair projects are great because you get to share your burdens with less of a possibility of having an asshole groupmate who’ll drag everybody down. But then, everyone is terrified to be paired with the new kid.

 —Your pair will be the person next to you. I’ll give you additional details by the end of the month. Dismissed.”

 The entire class, apart from Jamie, relaxes.

 The bell rings.

 Yuri Plisetsky shoots bolt upright. He turns to Jamie. He’s not glaring. If Jamie were crazy, she’d probably say that he looked a little like that grumpy cat meme that’s been floating around the Internet.

 “What did I miss?” he demands.

 “We’re doing a presentation at the end of the semester,” Jamie says. “I’m your partner.”

 “Eh?” He scrutinizes her. “What was your name again?”

 Jamie takes the time to feel a little offended. The little shit slept through the class and didn’t even have the grace to know her name. She can already feel the last embers of hope dying in her heart. She is so fucking screwed.

 “Jamie Aquino,” she says. “And I know who you are so.”

 Yuri Plisetsky nods, getting up abruptly.

 “We’ll talk about it later,” he says. “I have stuff to do.” He walks out and doesn’t look back.

 She. Is. So. Fucking. Screwed.

 

\--

 

“By the way, darling, there’s a new ice rink’s open downtown,” Jamie’s mother tells her over dinner.

 Jamie picks at her meal. Her dad is not home yet. He won’t be home for another hours at least. She needs to keep this up with her mother until the end of the meal, at least.

 “That’s nice,” she says.

 “I thought you could go with your friends in the weekend,” her mother says. “Show off your skills.”

 I don’t have skills, Jamie thinks. Her mother made her take figure skating lessons when she was a kid. She was terrible at it. Like literally terrible. She spent more time falling than actually being upright. The only reason she lasted two years at the damn thing was because her mother was insistent.

 “My friends are busy,” she tells her mother.

 “But I already called their parents and they said it was okay…”

 Shit shit shit. One day, her mother will stop treating her like a first grader and keep calling the parents of her friends. That day cannot come too fucking soon.

 “Oh, so that must’ve been the thing they were talking about.” Jamie says in the fakest cheery voice possible. Her mother seems to eat it up without question, a tentative smile already on her lips. “But I have to study for Chemistry.”

 Her mother’s head shoot’s up at that and okay, maybe Jamie shouldn’t have brought that up. The tentative smile disappears completely.

 “Why?” her mother asks. “Are you having problems, honey?”

 Jamie forces a smile on her lips. “Not really but I know I can get better at it. And it’s better to study than to ice skate, right?”

 Her mother waves a dismissive hand. The smile is back and Jamie almost lets out a sigh of relief.

 “Oh you’re young,” she says. “And you’ve been working so hard. You should enjoy yourself once in a while.”

 Jamie’s lips are starting to hurt from all that smiling.

 “Okay then mom, if you say so,” she says. “Ice skating sounds great.”

 Her mother instantly brightens. Sometimes, Jamie really, really hates her life.

 “Great!” she says. “Your skates are too small now, of course, but I asked the manager and apparently you can rent some at the rink and…”

 Jamie tunes her words out, the smile slipping off her lips. Shit shit shit, she thinks.

 This is, officially, the worst day ever.

 

\--

 

“C’mon Jamie, cheer up! It’ll be fun.”

 “I am never forgiving you for agreeing to this,” she tells Carla. “Never never never.” Carla merely rolls her eyes and bumps their shoulder together. Their other friends are already waiting at the rink.

 “It’s gonna be fun,” Carla repeats. “Think about it this way, you won’t be the only one falling flat on your ass. We’re all going to suck together.”

 “Falling flat on your ass or sleeping through the day. Guess which one I find more appealing. C’mon, take a guess.”

 “You get to spend an entire day out of the house for free,” Carla says, unperturbed. She’s been Jamie’s best friend since first grade, which means that by now, she’s desensitized to Jamie’s bullshit. “I don’t see what your problem is.”

And Jamie couldn’t really argue with that, even if she wanted to. And she really, really wanted to. Damn Carla for knowing her too well.

The ice skating rink they’re going to is pretty big. It’s the same rink that Jamie practiced in as a kid but the management’s changed. The rates are apparently cheaper, even though it’s closed for all of Sunday. They also hold classes for younger children and ones for people who just want to learn.

Her mother also mentioned some things about award winning skaters but Jamie hadn’t really been paying attention at that point.

They go to the counter. The man working there is a small, dark-haired man. His dark brown eyes are framed by thick, blue-rimmed glasses. He smiles at Carla and Jamie when he sees them.

“What can I do for you?” he asks. He has a slight accent that Jamie can’t quite place. Detroit, maybe. Or somewhere else entirely.

“Um my mom told me about this rink and—”

“Oh yes! Jamie and Carla, right? Some of your friends are already inside, I think. Your bills are already paid for.” The man immediately brightens. And okay, Jamie has to admit, that smile is pretty cute. For an adult, that is. “What’s your size?”

Jamie and Carla tell him and he pulls out two pairs of skates from underneath the counter.

“Have fun,” he says. “The rink’s open until eight.”

 “Thanks,” Carla says, grinning. She bumps Jamie’s shoulder and laughs at the expression on her face. “That gives us about three hours to have fun. C’mon then, let’s show off your mad skills.”

 “I don’t have skills,” Jamie mutters. “Unless you count repeatedly failing as a skill.”

 Carla laughs, putting an arm around her shoulder.

 “Whatever you say champ,” she says.

 Jamie doesn’t grumble as much as she could have. Mostly because Carla’s her best friend and best friends are hard to find. But let it be known, for the record, that she really, really wanted to.

 

\--

 

The thing about Jamie and figure skating is… Well, you don’t spend two years working your ass off on something without gaining some sort of competence in it. She hates it. Like legitimately, honest to god hates it with a burning passion, but she’s not a newbie at it.

 There are some skills she just can’t unlearn, no matter how much she wants to.

 Jamie can actually keep herself upright on the ice, which is a great deal more than what her friends can do. She spends the three hours alternating between laughing at her friends and helping them find their balance.

 She also tries a single toe loop. Of course, she falls flat on her face, but hey, A for Effort, right?

 All in all, it’s not the worst trip her mom could have forced her into. Still not the best, mind you, but definitely not the worst.

 “We should do this again sometimes,” she tells Carla reluctantly and Carla howls with laughter. So do her friends. Jamie doesn’t really bother hiding her annoyance at anything. Her expression just makes them laugh harder.

 “Told you you’d like it,” she says. Jamie grumbles in response but Carla’s not wrong. She did enjoy it.

 At least until five minutes before closing time, when an odd thing happens. Not odd enough to darken her mood completely but… odd.

 Yuri Plisetsky walks in the rink. His blond hair is loose and there’s a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Jamie and her friends were just getting ready to leave. They ended ten minutes early because it’s better if they get to wind down before leaving and unlacing skating shoes are a bit of a bitch.

 Jamie frowns when she catches sight of him. She doesn’t hate Yuri, exactly, even if he is a bit of an ass. But hey, they’re in high school; everyone there is a bit of an ass, in their own way. Once she’s gotten over the idea that he’s going to spontaneously murder her, she thinks that they might have actually been friends if she weren’t so fucking perplexed by the guy.

 He sleeps through most of his classes and doesn’t even bother pretending that he’s paying attention but he still gets perfect marks. Jamie’s corrected his Chemistry so many times now that she would’ve accused him of cheating because there is no way someone sleeping through his classes would get that sort of marks if it weren’t for the fact that _he’s sitting right next to her and he’s definitely not cheating._

 He also seems to really love cats. All of his things have pictures of cats on them. And he also seems incredibly fond of wearing cat ear headbands. One time, she caught a few college-age kids donning the exact same cat ear headbands Yuri was wearing earlier that day, give him an entire bag full of stuffed cat dolls. Jamie doesn’t think she’s ever seen him in that shade of red. Jamie would use the word terrified but she has trouble connecting the terms ‘terrified’ and ‘Yuri Plisetsky’ in one sentence.

 Still, he doesn’t throw them away in the trash the moment the girls are gone so he must not hate them.

 They talk sometimes in Chemistry, when he’s not asleep. Sometimes about the project they’re supposed to be doing and sometimes to bitch about how fucking hard Honors Chemistry is.

 (Not like he’d known, since to reiterate, he gets perfect marks.)

 He’s actually pretty polite as long as you don’t accidentally insult him. Which, is not the worst trait a person could have, considering.

 She doesn’t hate him. They’re not friends but sometimes, when he’s still on campus for lunch, he joins them. Right at the edge of the table and giving them death glares all the while, but he’s there, sipping his juice box and picking at his food. It’s like taking in a stray from the streets, Jamie swears to god. You get an equal chance of getting to pet it or having it hiss at you and try to claw your face off.

 (Yes, she means this literally. Carla offered him a box of milk two weeks ago and he took it with nothing more than a muttered thanks.

 Then the other day, Yuki gave him half of her katsudon and he’d turned red and all but shouted that he hated katsudon.

 Of course, he still took it a few minutes later and devoured it within minutes.)

 Still, she doesn’t hate him. Even when he gets better marks than her in Honors Chemistry or when he’s shouting at her. And she definitely doesn’t want him cheated out of his money. No one deserves that.

 “The rink’s closing in like five minutes, dude,” she tells Yuri. “You should probably just refund your money and come back tomorrow.” He stops in the bench right next to the one Jamie and her friends are sitting on, regarding them.

 “Not for me it’s not,” he says.

 And he doesn’t say anything else. Just sits on the benches and takes a pair of skates out of his duffel bag. They’re expensive kind that her mother made her look at when she was younger. Right. He said something about figure skating when he introduced himself to the class. Still, it’s the middle of the night. Not really the best time for figure skating. Or any kind of sport, really.

 It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing Jamie’s seen him done—that prize goes to that one time he chased a silver-haired man around the parking lot screaming bloody murder while holding a large teddy bear—but it’ll definitely be in the top ten.

 “I’m afraid I have to close now,” the employee Jamie and Carla met earlier says. He came in a few moments earlier, stopping right next to Yuri. “Just leave your skates at the counter.”

 Yuri doesn’t even look up at this, just continues lacing his skates.

 Jamie opens her mouth to tell him again when Carla tugs at her arm.

 “C’mon,” she says. “He can handle himself.”

 Jamie shakes her head but follows Carla’s lead nonetheless. The employee stays behind with Yuri. She thinks he sees him sit down next to him.

 “Viktor’s not going to be able to make it until later tonight,” Jamie hears the employee says. “He has a late meeting with the—”

 “Yeah I know.” Jamie can almost picture Yuri rolling his eyes and waving his hand dismissively. It seems like the kind of thing he’d do. “He texted me before I got here. So I’m stuck with you then, katsudon?”

 “I’m afraid so.”

 A lot of grumbling, some of it not in English but Jamie doesn’t really catch most of it. She hears the employee laugh lightly.

 “Ready to go?” Carla asks as they drop off the skates on the counter. Jamie nods and shakes her self. It’s not like she’s some gossip or something. She barely knows Yuri Plisetsky and what he chooses to do in his free time is his own business, no matter how odd it may be.

 Even when it’s apparently skating in the middle of the night, which, to be clear, is pretty damn odd.

 

\--

 

September rolls into October and then November and Jamie thinks that Yuri Plisetsky may be starting to become a friend.

 (Or has become a friend. Whatever. Jamie’s never been too good with semantics.)

 She still thinks that he’s an ass but then, she thinks of most of her friends that way; it doesn’t make her like them any less. Mostly, Jamie thinks that adults are just lying through their teeth when they’re tell you that your friends have to have the same interests as you. That’s just complete bullshit. The only thing you need to make a friend is continued proximity over a long period of time.

 Think about it this way, if neither of you have strangled each other by the end of the second week, you probably already have a mutual respect for each other. (If you have then, really you wouldn’t have a problem, either, seeing as one of you would probably be dead or grievously injured by that time.) That’s the only thing you need in a friendship, really: Time. And Jamie and Yuri have been seatmates for a long time now.

 (Jamie thinks that it all came to a head when she saw a cat shaped keychain once and promptly thought of Yuri. She buys it and gives it to him the next day. He sucks in a sharp (panicked? it almost sounded panicked) breath and regards her warily. He holds the keychain the way one would hold a bomb.

 “What’s this for?” he asks.

 “I saw it and it was cheap so I bought it,” she says. “You seem to really like cats.”

 “And how’d you know that?” he demands. “Did you—”

 “Dude literally everything you have has some form of feline on it. It wasn’t that hard to figure out.”

 “Oh.” Yuri blinks at her perplexed. He looks down at his shirt (tiger print) to his bag (three kittens) and his hoodie (cat ears). Jamie can’t help the tiny little smirk forming at her lips. Yuri looks away and mutters something too soft for her to hear.

 “What?”

 He mutters the words again, not meeting her eye. They put a wide grin on Jamie’s face.

 “I’m sorry could you say that again?”

 “I said thanks!”)

 (There was also that one time when he let her copy off him for a ten-page worksheet in Chemistry. It had been given over a week beforehand and Jamie had barely answered anything because _she cannot fucking understand Chemistry_ when he’d nudged his worksheet towards her, glaring at the blackboard. She had been a second away from hyperventilating and bursting into tears when he did and she honestly could have kissed him in that second.

 She gives him an entire box of chocolate chip cookies the next day and neither of them mentions it ever again.)

 She nudges Yuri’s shoulders. She gets a glare for her troubles but hey, she got his attention, right? Besides, she’s used to the glares. She gets one from him like every day. It’s practically tradition at this point. She’d probably be more scared if he _didn’t_ glare at her.

 “I think we should start with the presentation for the report tonight,” she says. “I need your email.”

 He regards her, blinking slowly, like he’s mulling over his words. Odd. Like he’s actually thinking of what he’s going to say before he says them. The last thing she ever associated with Yuri Plisetsky is restraint.

 “Okay,” he says. He scribbles something on a slip of paper, hesitates, and crosses it out. He writes a different email address under it and hands it to her.

 “Okay,” Jamie says. “I’ll set up a google slides later and we can talk there.”

 “Okay,” Yuri says.

 “Okay.”

 She said that she considers Yuri as a friend but Jamie never said they figured out how to _talk._ It’s not a big deal. Any type of relationship is a work in progress, anyway.

 

\--

 

She sets up the google slides that night and half-heartedly opens wikipedia. She may be an overachiever but she’s also a highschooler. Procrastination practically comes with the territory.

 So that’s why she’s absolutely floored to find that, the next morning, Yuri has done his entire part, complete with citations and pictures.

 “Holy shit,” she says.

 She doesn’t know whether to feel guilty or annoyed. She feels mostly annoyed. Doing the twenty percent of your grade report in an AP class in one night, and so far from the deadline? That’s practically showing off. And not just regular, run of the mill showing off that AP students tend to do; this is just an unnecessary level of showing off.

 That little shit.

 

\--

 

“Good job on the presentation,” Jamie tells him in Chemistry class. “But you didn’t have to do it so early. The report’s practically a month away.”

 Yuri shrugs carelessly.

 “I got it done early,” he says. “I wouldn’t have time to do it later this month, anyway. I’d be out of the country for most of it. As well as early December.”

 He tells her this casually, like it’s not a big deal. Like this isn’t the biggest deal of news that Jamie’s heard all morning. Like it hasn’t woken her up and given her a cold shot through her bloodstream. She considers Yuri a friend but that doesn’t mean he can’t be an ass, once in a while.

 Like now. He is being the biggest ass in history right now.

 “What?” she says.

 “I won’t be here,” he repeats. The little shit doesn’t even have the grace to look even mildly guilty about it. “I have things I have to do.”

 “Things,” Jamie repeats. “What things?”

 “Things.” And okay, he gives her the evil eye, daring her to answer back. Jamie should probably back off.

 “What will you be doing that’s more important than school?”

 “None of your business,” he snaps.

 “Will you at least be here for the report?” Jamie asks desperately. Her mind is already running through a thousand different possibilities. They’d probably be able to discuss Yuri’s part through email. Jamie hates corresponding through email but if it’ll get her through this class she’ll take it. All she needs is—

 “When is it again?”

 “The eighth,” Jamie says. She needs—

 “I won’t be here,” he says. “I’ll be in France.”

 Jamie’s brain short circuits at that. France? For real? Yuri Plisetsky is going to skip class and leave her hanging for a vacation? Seriously?

 “You’ll be in France?” Jamie says. “Can’t you, I don’t know, move your flight back by two days or something?” Or go on vacation at a normal time like everyone else in the class. “This is pretty important, you know?”

 He smirks like she said something funny.

 “This isn’t that kind of thing,” he says. “And I’m pretty sure it’s more important than that.”

 The bell chooses at that moment to ring. Jamie tries to think of something to say. Some way to convince him not to flunk the two of them out of this class and give Jamie an aneurysm. She comes up blank.

 So she says the only thing she can think of:

 “Fuck you.” And promptly walks out.

 

\--

 

Jamie ends up doing the report alone, because true to his word, Yuri is out of town for it.

 (She tried talking to her teacher about it to ask if she get an extension or just report on some part or _something_ but the teacher had just smiled and said that she already knew about Yuri and would take it into account with their grade.

 Like, what the hell does that even mean?)

 Yuri sends her all his notes on the subject and they’re incredibly detailed and easy to follow and Jamie can almost understand them but Carla still has to talk her out of a panic attack before the class.

 Fucking hell, she doesn’t even know why she took the class. It’s not like she’ll ever be able to understand stoichiometry and chemical equations and ions and all that shit. She never has and she never will and now she’s going to fail because she can’t admit to herself that she can’t understand a thing.

 And now she’s going to have to stand in front of the class and show them how much of a failure she actually is.

 “It’s going to be fine,” Carla tells her. They’re hiding out in one of the bathroom stalls as Jamie resists the urge to throw up.

 “Fuck you,” she says.

 Carla continues to stroke her hair because she’s a good friend. Something that Yuri Plisetsky is most definitely not.

 “Tell me I’m not going to fail this class,” Jamie says.

 “Jamie, darling you’re in running for valedictorian,” Carla says. “I’m pretty sure you’re not going to fail a stupid Chemistry report.”

 “Fuck Yuri,” Jamie says. “He’s the one who knows this shit not me. I don’t know what to do.”

 “You’ll figure it out,” Carla says. “You always do. But yeah, Yuri’s an ass and I’ll be punching him in the face when he gets back.”

 “You’re a good friend,” Jamie tells her.

 “I know,” Carla says. “And you’re bringing me an entire box of brownies tomorrow.”

 Jamie lets out a snort. It comes out wrong; breathy and choked at the same time.

 “Definitely,” she says. “I’ll bring you three boxes.”

 

\--

 

“So how’s school going, darling?”

 Jamie forces another smile onto her lips. She’s exhausted and emotionally drained. The smiles are getting harder and harder to produce. Right now, she wants to collapse onto her bed and never get up.

 “It’s going fine mom,” she says. “Great actually!”

 Her mother taps the seat on the couch, right next to her. The TV is flashing in front of them, showing skits of… Oh, hell no.

 “There’s a figure skating contest going on in a few minutes,” her mom says. “The Grand Prix finals. It’s near the end but one skater is still coming. Do you want to watch it with me?”

 Jamie wants to say no, should probably say no because she’s exhausted and should probably just smother herself with her pillow or something. She really wants to say no but then her mom is staring at her with those huge, brown, doe eyes and… Dammit.

 Jamie sighs and sits down on the spot her mom saved for her.

 “Don’t you miss it sometimes?” her mom asks. “Doing that?”

 Jamie doesn’t answer, just concentrates on watching the television. The guy skating in the TV has dark hair, cropped short. He has intense black eyes and a brooding expression as he takes his final bow. He gives a thumbs up somewhere to the side and the camera cuts to reveal—

 Holy shit.

 “But that’s—”

 “They’re quite sweet aren’t they?” her mom comments. “They do this every time they’re together in competition. It’s adorable.”

 “But that’s—”

 “Yuri Plisetsky,” her mother says and holy, motherfucking shit. It is him with his long blond hair and all, wearing a silver and red costume that glints different colors against the harsh lights of the stadium. “He won silver last year, I think? The guy who won gold is the guy coaching him now. Well, one of them. They’re another adorable couple.”

 “I have Chemistry with him,” Jamie says, feeling a bit faint as Yuri glides onto the ice. The other guy—Altin, the TV had said—also gives him a thumbs up.

 The music starts and Jamie has exactly two thoughts: 1.) Holy shit, Yuri is amazing. She’s not an expert but even she knows that most of the things he does should belong only to the theoretical; and 2.) The little shit didn’t even tell her, letting her believe that he’d just gone off to vacation when he…

 Little shit.

 

\--

 

Yuri gets back two days after their report. The moment Jamie sees him, she punches him on the arm. Hard.

 He yelps.

 “What the hell, Aquino?!”

 He glares at her, rubbing his arm. Jamie doesn’t really care.

 “Why didn’t you tell me you ass?” she says. “Things would have been much simpler if you had but no. I had to find out while I was sitting with my mom, watching you give your boyfriend a thumbs up!”

 Yuri pales then turns red. Jamie can’t tell if it’s out of anger or embarrassment.

 “It’s none of your business,” he says. Jamie crosses her arms over her chest.

 “Try again,” she says.

 “I’m hiding from my fans,” he mutters. “They’re terrifying.”

 “The girls with the cat ears?”

 Yuri gulps and turns even redder. He seems to be trying to distract Jamie from this reaction by glaring his most terrifying glare. It is so not working.

 “And you didn’t trust us?” Jamie asks. “We’ve been giving you your daily supply of milk and cookies!”

 Yuri’s face sours.

 “You’re just stupid for not noticing,” he says. “Where do you think I go off to after class? I’m in the Olympics for fuck’s sake.”

 There’s the Russian accent again, making him sound more dark and foreboding than he actually is. Lucky for him, Jamie is so not buying it. She shoves a box of chocolate chip cookies towards him. He catches it with his hand, eyes wide.

 “My mom made you cookies,” she says. “For winning gold.”

 Yuri stares at it like it’s a bomb.

 “T-thanks,” he manages to force out.

 “You’re sitting with us at lunch today,” Jamie says. “And you are sitting next to me or Carla or whatever, do you hear? And you are going to tell us everything because friends do not keep secrets.”

 “Now wait a—”

 Jamie rolls his eyes and ignores him. She seizes him by the arm and drags him towards the cafeteria.

 “You don’t get to say no,” she says. “We are friends now and _you are going to act like it or so help me!_ ”

 Yuri doesn’t answer but he doesn’t try to resist either. Okay then. Jamie’s willing to take whatever victory she can get.

 “Oh and Yuri?”

 He casts a glance towards her, looking slightly terrified. It makes Jamie more than a little pleased to see it.

 “If you ever ditch me for a group report ever again without telling me why, I will fucking murder you. You got it?”

 Yuri gulps and nods. Jamie smiles slightly. The day’s getting better and okay, Jamie can be a little shit, too, if she wants to be.


	2. interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's winter break and they take the time to enjoy themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I am posting this nearly a month later and I am very sorry for the long wait :/ Thank you so much for the warm response and everyone who read, commented, and gave kudos to this fic. You are all the best and I am sending all of you all my hugs :)))  
> So, I originally planned for this fic to have two chapters but... yeah that's not going to happen. All the conversations I wanted to happen just refused to be in this chapter so yeah, I'm adding another one, which will hopefully come soon.
> 
> Alrighty then, that's about it! Onwards!

Neither of them mentions the Report ever again, but for an entire week, Yuri has a different form of expensive gift for her. It ranges from food, to stuffed animals, to DVDs. None of which Jamie likes but Yuri had looked so earnest in giving them that she hadn’t had the heart to say no. She’s not a complete monster.

(Okay, she may be a bit of a monster. He tries to give her a signed poster of himself with his coaches but Jamie had laughed so hard that he’d just turned red and shoved it into a nearby trash can.

What? She has to draw the line _somewhere._ )

On the fifth day, with Yuri carrying an inhumanly huge stuffed panda (who even uses huge stuffed animals?) Jamie finally snaps.

“Yuri I like pandas and I liked stuffed animals but for the love of god if you are giving me that huge ass panda, I will literally kill you.”

“But I was—”

“Literally kill you with my bare hands. I will strangle you and then beat you to death with that stupid panda and then strangle you some more,” Jamie says. “Just say you’re sorry like a normal person. Christ.”

“Sorry,” Yuri says and he sounds sincere about it. And more than a little terrified of her, as he should be. Jamie is pretty terrifying, if she does say so herself. She rolls her eyes at him.

“Fine,” she says. “Now for the love of god return that ridiculous thing. What the hell will I do with a giant stuffed panda? Who even thought this was a good idea?”

Yuri hides the giant stuffed panda behind him—which is impossible since the thing is nearly as big as he is—cheeks pink. He mutters something about Viktor giving horrible advice and doesn’t meet her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I shouldn’t have left you without an explanation like that.”

“It’s fine,” she says. “Water under the bridge. I’m switching to regular Chemistry and never going to be back for that dumb subject anyway but don’t you dare do that to anyone else, you hear?”

Yuri nods sharply, like it’s a military order and his life depends on it. It’s a little cute, Jamie thinks. He takes things way too seriously for her but hey, they make it work. Then she rolls her eyes and messes up Yuri’s hair just because she can. Yuri growls and tries to move away but Jamie has her arm firmly around his shoulder. She’s three inches taller than him and it’s practically her moral imperative to give him shit for it.

Neither of them mentions it ever. Again. Everything is back to as it should be.

 

\--

 

The Russian Nationals happen exactly two weeks after the Grand Prix, only a few days after school officially lets out for winter break. Yuri’s Instagram is suddenly filled with pictures of St. Petersburg and people Jamie assumes are his friends back in Russia. There are a lot of cat ears involved, also a red-haired girl a little older than them that seems incredibly fond of lifting Yuri over her head.

(Jamie wonders how she can manage to contact that girl and ask her to teach her that without Yuri knowing about it.)

The break also makes Jamie breathe a sigh of relief. It feels like a weight getting lifted off her chest, making her breathing easier. Making it easier to exist in general. She avoids her parents and mostly stayed holed up in her room. It’s the best break from anything she’s ever had.

She hasn’t told her mother about the Chemistry thing but she’s pretty sure she doesn’t have to. If the school hasn’t bothered to, then why should she?

Carla invites her over to her house to watch the Russian Nationals.

“I didn’t know they showed that on TV,” Jamie says, blinking.

“We’re gonna livestream it from my laptop, duh.”

“Oh uhm.” Jamie shrugs helplessly. Carla can’t see the shrug over the phone but it seems necessary. “Maybe next time. I have stuff to do.”

“Come on, I know you haven’t seen a full program of his. He’s actually pretty cool but don’t tell him I said that.”

“I have stuff to do,” Jamie repeats.

Her chest is constricting again and it must show in her voice because Carla doesn’t even give her crap for it. She just snorts. Jamie can practically hear her rolling her eyes.

“Fine, be that way. We’re going ice skating on Sunday. Do you want to come?”

“Not really.”

“I will get you to go out this break, Aquino, I swear to God. I’ll call everyday if I have to. I will drag you out of that house kicking and screaming.”

Jamie snorts. “Good luck with that,” she says.

“You’re doubting me. I can hear you doubting me.” Carla is grinning. Jamie can hear it in her voice. Jamie is grinning, too, not that she’s telling Carla that. “I will make you regret ever doubting me.”

“Sure you will.”

 

\--

 

Winter comes to their little town with the force of a… Well, with the force of a snowstorm. It is _freezing_ and no sane person would have been caught outside in that type of weather. Christmas passes and the New Year comes and Jamie barely notices any of it happening. She wouldn’t have noticed it at all if her mother hadn’t forced her to go outside during the holidays.

(“It would be good for you, dear,” she had said and Jamie hadn’t really understood _how_ but she’d followed nonetheless.)

(And there was the fact that her dad was actually at home. Jamie catches sight of him sometimes in the hallway, when she’s on her way to the bathroom. He gives her a nod of acknowledgement and Jamie gives him one back.

One time, he’d given Jamie a pat on the head like she was a cute dog and Jamie has to bite back bitter words on her tongue.)

She stays mostly locked in her room, studying, reviewing. panicking, ignoring her parents. She already got accepted into a good college and is mostly good to go, given that she doesn’t flunk out in her last year. She still thinks it’s a possibility. A very small possibility, but a possibility nonetheless.

Of course, that’s not thinking about the scholarships she needs to get through college. She is neither sporty nor particularly outgoing or poor. She definitely needs high grades to keep those around.

Carla, true to her word, calls her every night to try and get her out of the house the next day. Jamie turns down all of her requests with the knowledge that she is being a really shitty friend. Her mother has also been constantly talking about medical tracks but Jamie’s doing her best to avoid that. She’s not opening that particular bag of cats just yet. Her scholarship accepts just about any major so it’s not like she _has_ to. She’s going to wait for a little while; test the waters. She’ll tell her mother after she graduates.

(College. She means after she graduates college. There’s no way in hell she’s telling her mom about her career choices while she’s still living under the same roof.)

“Pick us up tomorrow,” Carla says on one of her late night calls. “We’re playing Mario Kart at your house.”

“You know where I live,” Jamie points out.

“This is to make sure you actually go out and breathe, you know, fresh air.”

“I don’t have a car,” Jamie says. “How will I pick you up?”

“Michael’s bringing the car. Just be at the school parking lot.”

“It’s freezing.”

“Wear a coat,” Carla snaps.

“I’m busy,” Jamie says.

“It’s vacation Jamie,” Carla says. “Have you ever thought of, I don’t know, having a vacation?”

Jamie sighs. She knows a lost fight when she sees one and really, no one wins against Carla. She’s tired and she’s just spent an entire day making sure her mother does not ask her anything college related. She does not have the strength to turn down her best friend, as well.

“Fine,” she says and Carla, true to form, lets out a whoop of victory. Which is how she finds herself in the school parking lot in the freezing cold, waiting for her friends. She is bundled in her coat and cursing Carla for even coming up with this stupid, ridiculous idea. That’s also how she spots a very, very angry Yuri screaming at the top of his lungs in the middle of the high school parking lot.

Yuri, Jamie has come to find, tends to be very, very, very angry about everything, or at least he likes to pretend that he is. Jamie thinks that it’s the hormones (it’s normal, her health teacher had said. Mood swings and changing bodies and all that. It was a generally the single most uncomfortable class Jamie’s ever taken) but she could be wrong. There are people who are just naturally very violent, right?

Not that he’s _violent_ violent because he’s really not. Yuri’s all bark (and by that she means a whole lot of bark) and absolutely no bite. He hasn’t even laid a hand on anyone since the ‘Matt Incident’ and Matt definitely deserved that. Mostly he just shouts, in all his five foot two glory and people are more than willing to let him have his way. Jamie finds it adorable.

Like now. Jamie finds him standing at the school parking lot, fists clenched, and looming (Can a kid who’s five foot two loom over someone who’s more than a foot taller than he is? Apparently, yes.) over a silver-haired man. He looks kinda familiar but it’s too far to tell.

Not even silver, like old, but legitimately silver. Like glow in the dark silver. Silver like the stuff they make jewelry with. His hair shines in a way that Jamie only thought existed in Disney movies or shampoo commercials. Everything around Yuri is absolutely unreal, even the people he knows, Jamie swears to god.

The man doesn’t even seem to notice the tiny ball of rage that’s two seconds away from murdering him standing right before him, just grins and continues chatting. Jamie is wondering if she should stop Yuri from murdering the man, when Yuri turns his head and catches sight of her. His expression changes from one of pure rage to something like pure determination. He marches towards her. A distant (and silly) part of Jamie still wonders if this is the moment she dies.

Being friends with someone apparently does nothing to quell basic survival instincts.

“Jamie,” he says. He seizes her by the elbow. “Take me somewhere and away from this old man.”

“Why? What are you even doing out here? It’s freezing.”

“Because!”

“Is this about the figure skating thing?” Jamie asks. “That thing that we absolutely do not talk about?”

It’s not an absurd statement. The man has the same posture as Yuri; the same grace that Jamie’s come to associate with dancers and figure skaters.

Yuri’s expression turns thunderous and Jamie is morally obligated to laugh at him so she does. The silver-haired man has caught up with them. Oh, so that’s why he looks so familiar. Viktor Nikiforov, his mother had told her. Yuri’s figure skating coach and apparently the most decorated figure skater in men’s single’s history, or so her mother had said.

He doesn’t look like any of that, though. Right now, he just looks like Yuri’s dad. He wouldn’t look out of place in a PTA meeting, with his immaculately pressed clothes and casual but professional posture that successful adults seem to have mastered. He even has some of his mannerisms, like the way he tilts his head curiously whenever he spots a new person or how they shove their hands in the pockets of their jackets to give off an air of casualness that absolutely does not work. Jamie wonders if she should tell Yuri any of this.

“Nice to meet you Mr. Nikiforov,” Jamie says politely. “Is Yuri being difficult?” Viktor Nikiforov grins at her. His mouth is open in a heart-shaped smile and his expression is one of absolute delight. Not very PTA but still rocking the dad vibe. He doesn’t ask her how she knew his name.

“Is this one of your friends, Yura?” he asks. “You never told me you told them about your figure skating.”

“He didn’t,” Jamie says as Yuri turns bright red at her side but doesn’t say anything. He’s trembling a little, whether from anger or embarrassment, Jamie doesn’t know. “I saw him on TV skating for the Grand Prix.”

“My husband choreographed his two programs,” Viktor Nikiforov says. “Weren’t they absolutely amazing?”

Jamie doesn’t really know enough about figure skating to comment on it. It was pretty to look at—the parts she was paying attention to, anyway. Jamie tends to zone out whenever her mom asks her to watch figure skating with her. It’s better for everyone involved—and she could tell Yuri’s better than every other skater just through the fact that he’s the only one who didn’t fall at least once. She has no idea how the scoring system works, though. She says, “It was okay.”

“Do you like figure skating, um…”

“Jamie,” she says. “My name’s Jamie. And no, not really. My mom does, though.”

Yuri grumbles under his breath. Probably Russian curse words, or whatever else language he knows. The kid’s got the dirtiest mouth Jamie’s ever seen which says a lot seeing as she’s in _high school_.

“Shut up old man,” he says. “You’re embarrassing me.”

“He’s trying to run away from you,” Jamie tells him, glad for the change of subject. Viktor Nikiforov waves it off carelessly.

“He always is,” he says. “Always trying to sneak off to practice even when he knows it’s not good for him and would probably end with him grievously injured and unable to skate for the rest of his life.” He adds the last part with a very pointed look towards Yuri. A very, very pointed look. Yuri seems to be very, very pointedly ignoring it.

“I need to practice if I want to land that quad axel!” he says. “I’m not gonna let katsudon be the only one who lands it after he took my short program record.”  
“You couldn’t land a single toe loop in this state, kotyonok.”

Yuri squawks, literally squawks like a duck, and runs to attack Viktor Nikiforov. Jamie holds him back, partly because she doesn’t want to see anyone get murdered, partly because she doesn’t want to watch Yuri fail miserably. The guy’s about a foot taller than Yuri, and an adult. Yuri doesn’t stand a chance.

“Our friends are going to my house to play some video games and Yuri’s coming with us,” Jamie says. “Make him do normal boy stuff. Absolutely no skating.”

“What?! No! I have to train!”

Jamie opens her mouth to tell Yuri doesn’t really have a choice in the matter when Viktor Nikiforov’s laughter interrupts her. It’s loud and full and unstoppable. Jamie wonders if all Russians are like that or if she was just unfortunate enough to get stuck with these two.

“Look’s like you’ve found your match, Yura,” he says. He adds a few more words in Russian that makes Yuri turn beet red and mutters something about a hag. His grip on Jamie’s elbow remains firm and he doesn’t try to run away.

“C’mon,” Jamie says. She says goodbye to Viktor Nikiforov and drags Yuri to the car where Carla and the others are waiting.

“I’ll see you later, Yura,” Viktor Nikiforov calls out. “Yuuri’s making Katsudon.”

“This is stupid,” Yuri mutters but lets himself be dragged along.

“It’s Mario Kart,” Jamie says. “I thought you liked Mario Kart.”

Yuri grumbles some more but Jamie very pointedly ignores him. Like she said, he really doesn’t have a choice in the matter. He probably knows it, too because he doesn’t try to run away.

“So Viktor,” Jamie says. “I know he’s not your dad, but he’s kinda like your dad, isn’t he?”

Yuri tenses. He lets out a sound like he’d been punched twenty times over in the space of a few minutes. His eyes have gone wide. He stares at Jamie with a mixture of horror, indignation, and disbelief.

“My what—Wha—NO HE’S NOT. WHY WOULD YOU—”

Jamie laughs. Watching Yuri splutter is one of the best pastimes she has. It never gets old. They reach Michael’s car, where Carla and Alex are waiting. Or trying to vibrate out of skin with the way they're trembling from the cold. The fact that Carla has managed to wrangle two other people to come out in these freezing temperatures is nothing short of terrifying.

“Look who I found,” Jamie says and the entire group howls in delight.

“Glad you could join us,” Carla says, coming forward, like this was her plan all along. Jamie wouldn’t be surprised if it was. 

“This is stupid,” Yuri repeats.

“C’mon Yuri,” Carla says, eyes twinkling in the way they do when she’s planning something sinister. It’s Mario Kart so Jamie is probably not that too far off the mark. “I’m going to kick your ass at Mario Kart and you will cry like a baby.”

 

\--

 

Yuri, to literally no one’s surprise, is hella competitive. Jamie isn’t, also to no one’s surprise. Video games—competition in general, really—just aren’t her thing which would have been great if not for the fact that Carla may be the single most competitive Mario Kart player on the entire planet.

Carla challenges practically everyone she meets to Mario Kart or any form of video game. It’s kind of a rite of passage with her. She doesn’t really consider you a friend until she’s utterly demolished your self-esteem through augmented realities.

(Jamie is an exception. Jamie and Carla have known each other since they were toddlers and Carla could not have challenged her to anything yet. Not that she didn’t try. Jamie still has scars from the game of tag Carla just _had_ to play the moment they met.)

“You’re going down Plisetsky,” Carla says and Yuri just scoffs like the insult is beneath his acknowledgement. Jamie leans back on the couch. The others have taken their spots on the floor. She should probably tell Yuri that he’s going to regret taking up Carla’s challenge but where would be the fun in that?

The other two guys playing, Michael and Alex, are already casting wary glances. They pick up their controllers because they are idiots who don’t know when to back down from a losing battle.

“Aren’t you going to play?” Alex asks.

“Hell no,” Jamie says. “I have a sense of self-preservation, you know? Unlike you idiots.” She nods towards Yuri and Carla who looks ready to punch each other, and they haven’t even started yet. This should be fun.

Michael and Alex gulp.

“It’s your house,” Alex tries.

“You’re on your own bitches.”

“We better not beat them,” Michael mumbles and Jamie scoffs. Michael’s being an idiot. No one’s beaten Carla in Mario Kart since its inception. It’s just one of the basic laws of nature: Carla is the uncontested queen of Mario Kart. Michael should have known this by now. They should all know this by now.

“I am staying out of this,” she says. “Have fun bringing down hell on earth, you idiots.”

 

\--

 

Carla wins the first game and Yuri demands a rematch. She wins that one, too, and another one after that. Yuri almost wins the last one but Carla plays dirty and threw a blue shell in Yuri’s direction just as he was about to cross the finish line, pushing him back to last place. By that time, Yuri looks ready to throttle her. He has to take a few calming breaths as he puts the controller down.

“Take that loser!” Carla shouts as she finishes the race, once again, in first. She’s a winner so she has the right to be a little shit. What a way to nurture a friendship. “Wanna have a rematch or are you too much of a chicken?”

“Who are you calling a—”

“Maybe we should—” Alex says hesitantly but is interrupted by Yuri attempting to lunge for Carla. Jamie rolls her eyes and grabs Yuri by his collar. She’s getting used to doing that.

“You’re in my house, Plisetsky,” she says. “Behave.”

Yuri takes another calming breath. Then a few more. He settles down and stops trying to maim Carla. Michael and Alex are off to the corner, hiding, and Jamie braces herself for the explosion but it doesn’t come. Yuri closes his eyes.

“I’m sorry for being rude,” he tells Jamie. To Carla he says in a deadly voice,

“I will get you back for this. I will stab you with my knife shoes and you will die and I will throw your body into the river and no one will know.”

Carla just smirks at him.

“Is that ‘cause you’re scared I’ll beat you again?”

Yuri opens his mouth to answer. Takes a deep breath. Takes another and closes his eyes. Then, he takes _another_ deep breath.

“This is beneath me,” he says.

“Admit it, no one can beat me,” Carla says. “Especially not a little shit like you.”

Yuri opens his mouth and Jamie decides to kick him lightly on the shoulder.

“Know when to quit, man,” she says. “You’re not winning this one.”

Yuri takes another few deep, calming breaths. He doesn’t seem any calmer but he’s not trying to kill Carla, so that’s something.

“Feed me dinner and never speak of this day ever again,” he demands and Jamie grins.

 

\--

 

It becomes a tradition after that. Every other afternoon is reserved for game night and Yuri somehow becomes a part of it. He doesn’t make it every afternoon but he goes to all that he has time for. They usually have dinner at Jamie’s house afterwards.

Jamie’s mother manages to hold back on her fangirling, though she does give a little yelp when Yuri first sat at the dining room table along with Jamie’s other friends. Yuri had put on the fakest smile Jamie’s ever seen on him—she knows what his real smiles look like, it’s wide and his eyes glint and his cheeks crinkle. This smile is a _celebrity_ smile. Jamie decides to intervene when her mom asks for an autograph.

“Mom Yuri just wants to eat,” she says. “He’s tired and hungry and he just lost to Carla five times over. He can give an autograph after dinner, yeah?”

“Okay,” Jamie’s mom says. Yuri smiles gratefully at her and Jamie kicks him under the table. Carla nudges him in the side and Michael throws a pea towards him when Jamie’s mom isn’t looking. Really, what are friends for?

Two weeks before school starts and after another round of Yuri once again losing Mario Kart, they eat dinner ends in relative silence (which is not very silent because there are five teenagers sitting around the same table and really, how silent can it possibly get?). Jamie’s mom doesn’t say much. A part of Jamie wishes her dad were here but he’s definitely busy with work. It’s mostly Yuri carrying the conversation because he seems immune to awkward silences or more accurately, he barrels through them with the force of a hurricane, like he does most things, because if there’s anything to be said about Yuri Plisetsky, it’s that he doesn’t let anything stop him.

Yuri clears his throat when Jamie’s mom begins cleaning up.

“Jamie,” he says.

“Yuri.”

“My—Otabek is going to be here in a few days,” he says. “I was wondering if all of you wanted to have dinner with us since we’re always eating here and…”

“Otabek is your boyfriend, right?” Carla asks. “That guy who you seem to have a weird thumbs up tradition with?”

Yuri turns red but nods.

“That’s nice,” Jamie says. “It’s about time you started feeding us, too.”

“Wouldn’t we be a third wheel, though?” Michael asks, ever practical. “I mean if you’re spending time with your boyfriend wouldn’t you rather be alone?”

“We’re eating at home,” Yuri says. He rolls his eyes and gives a very dramatic, very put-upon sigh. “Viktor and Katsudon will be there. You’ll definitely be a third wheel. _Everyone_ within a three mile radius is a third wheel when it comes to those two, and if Beka and I have to suffer through those two, then so do you.”

“I’m sure it’s not like that,” Michael says.

“It is very much like that. They are insufferable.”

“Great,” Carla says. “Sounds like a plan.”

“Great,” Jamie says. “I love being a third wheel.”

 

\--

 

Yuri picks them up on Saturday in the most expensive car that Jamie’s ever seen. Jamie had always known, in a distant sort of way, that Yuri had an expensive car. She remembers getting a glimpse of it on his first day, although that memory was mostly overshadowed by the memory of him kicking Matt in the nuts. She also knows that, objectively speaking, he is much, much richer than the average high schooler. Figure skating is expensive and he’s an international athlete. International athletes are rich, right?

Being up close and personal with all of that is… disconcerting.

“Cool car,” Jamie says. Yuri is wearing sunglasses, with his hair tied back. He is also wearing a pink leather jacket. He gives her a Look. She doesn’t see his eyes but she knows that he’s giving her a Look. Jamie doesn’t know what she’s done to deserve the Look.

“Get in,” he says and Jamie climbs into the back of the car. “We’re picking the others up on the way.”

“Where’s your boyfriend?”

“I left him back at home. I made Katsudon promise to stop the old man from interrogating him.”

“You live with your coaches?”

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“Shut up,” Yuri mutters. “I can hear your grin, Aquino and shut up. It’s not weird. It is convenient for us. A lot of skaters do it.”

“If you say so,” Jamie says. She does absolutely nothing to hide the grin on her face. “But you just left your boyfriend with them and you’re worried one of them will interrogate him, are you really sure they’re not your dads?”

Yuri growls but doesn’t say anything. Jamie would’ve given anything to whip the sunglasses off his eyes and see the look in his eye. She settles for laughing. Very, very loudly.

They pick up the others along the way and everyone, like Jamie, does a little double take at Yuri’s car. Yuri blasts metal rock through the radio, like the stereotypical emo teenager that he is. There are cat bobble heads lining the dash and a picture of him and his boyfriend pinned on the rearview mirror.

He stops in one of the nicest part of the neighborhood. The house’s walls are painted a sky blue and there is an honest-to-god white picket fence. There are gardenias on the porch, along with a sleeping poodle. A white cat is lying lazily on the windowsill. This time, it’s Michael who asks,

“I thought we were meeting your coaches not your parents. Or are your coaches also your parents?” And God bless the boy, he actually sounds genuinely confused. Jamie slings an arm over him in solidarity and shoots Yuri a smug grin.

Jamie expects another growl, maybe some more shouting, but to her surprise, Yuri only removes his sunglasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. He mutters a few things in Russian before glaring at them, as if daring them to laugh.

None of them laugh, though Jamie can tell they all want to. Damn that silly survival instinct.

“Come on,” Yuri mutters. “Everyone insists on making my life hell. I’m hungry. Let’s just get this over with.”

Carla slings an arm over his shoulder, pressing him into a half-hug. Yuri doesn’t try to move away from it.

“This is gonna be awesome,” she says. “And I am very excited to meet your dads.”

“THEY ARE NOT MY DADS.”

Carla taps him on the nose and Yuri hisses away from her, much like a cat.

“Sure they aren’t, Yuri,” she says. “Sure they aren’t.”

 

\--

 

They open the door to the smell of something delicious being fried. The poodle is dancing around them. Yuri had dragged the cat from the windowsill and currently has it squirming in his arms.

“This is Potya.” He nods at the cat. He turns to the dog with a distasteful expression that’s completely belied by the scratch he gives it behind the ears. “And that stupid thing’s Makkachin, their dog.”

A familiar voice calls out in Russian. Yuri shouts back in the same language and a moment later, small, dark-haired man comes out into the hallway in an apron. The same man who had been working at the ice rink when Jamie and her friends had visited.

The house looks like something out of a magazine of celebrity houses. Jamie decides not to comment on it.

“You must be Yurio’s friends,” he says cheerfully. “I’m Yuuri. Come in, come in. Make yourselves comfortable. Dinner’s nearly ready.”

“Where’s Beka?” Yuri demands. Yuuri gives him a look that’s half-helpless, half-apologetic. Yuri gapes.

“You left Beka with _him_?”

“Otabek didn’t mind,” Yuuri says. “He was the one who wanted to talk with Viktor.”

Yuri lets out a long string of curses and rushes down the hallway, narrowly missing Makkachin’s tail and nearly squeezing the life out of his cat. Yuuri didn’t even blink, like this kind of thing happened all the time, which considering that it’s Yuri, it probably did.

“Come in to the dining room,” he tells Jamie and her friends. “Yurio will probably be in the dining room, make yourselves at home.”

“Yurio?” Jamie asks.

“A nickname,” Yuuri explains. “It gets confusing if we’re both called Yuri. Although, you probably shouldn’t call him that. It makes him angry.”

“Lots of things make him angry,” Carla mutters. “He’s a little ball of concentrated anger.”

Yuuri beams at them and leads them to the dining room.

 

\--

 

Yuri apparently wasn’t lying when he said that everyone within a three mile radius from his coaches is a third wheel—with the looks they’re giving each other, Jamie thought that Yuri might have been underplaying it a bit—not that he and his boyfriend are any better. It feels like they are trapped in two different romance movies: a cheesy rom-com and those indie films that try too hard to be cool and edgy.

It wasn’t so bad when they were just eating dinner; at least they had been sitting on their own seats and had a firm, definite distance between them that people did not usually breach. There were a lot of heart eyes but it had been bearable. Then, Viktor had suggested that they move to the living room for dessert and everything had gone to hell.

Carla leans over to Jamie and mutters, “Do you think they’re always like this?”

Viktor is currently feeding Yuuri and Yuuri was doing absolutely nothing to stop it, despite the blush on his cheek. There is also a lot of sneaking food to the floor and to Makkachin and Jamie doesn’t even want to know what they were doing to each other’s feet.

Yuri and Otabek on the other hand were absolutely draped over each other, but not in the disgusting, coupley way, because Jamie doesn’t think it’s possible for Yuri to do that. Instead, he has his legs draped on Otabek’s lap, playing something on the phone and periodically opening his mouth for Otabek to shoot a Cheerio at it. Otabek has also somehow managed to get an arm over Yuri’s shoulder. The two of them are doing this with completely straight faces.

(It’s a hit and miss. Jamie would say that the success rate of their weird game is about fifty percent and she could almost swear that Yuri is getting more competitive with each miss.)

Jamie and her friends are stuck in the middle of it. Their hosts do not seem to find anything odd about the situation. Jamie is suddenly really grateful that she does not have to deal with this everyday.

“Figure skaters,” Jamie says. “Who the hell knows?”

And oddly enough, conversation is not as awkward as it could have been. It’s still hella awkward but Viktor is enough to hold an entire conversation on his own and his husband is enough to tone it down so it doesn’t get too obnoxious, all while they’re making heart eyes at each other. They ask about school, like the parents that Yuri absolutely refuses to call them and Jamie and her friends give the generic answers,

(‘It’s going fine. A little hard but nothing we can’t handle.’)

Yuri grumbles out a comment now and again, or interjects with some story, eyes completely focused on his phone. Otabek stays mostly silent. He’s a lot older than them, college age by the looks of it, and dresses in the same crazy biker style that Yuri seems incredibly fond of.

“So how long have you guys known each other?” Jamie asks Otabek. He throws a Cheerio and hits Yuri in the eye.

“Three years,” Yuri says at the same time Beka says, “Since I was thirteen.” Jamie’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise and Yuri turns red.

“Okay,” Jamie says. “Should I ask?”

“We were in ballet summer camp together,” Otabek says. “He didn’t remember me.”

If it had come from any other person, it would have sounded like a jibe, but Otabek says it with such a straight face and a monotonous voice that Jamie can’t be sure. She looks over to her friends and they seem to be as bemused as she is. Yuri doesn’t even react to it.

“He saved me from my fangirls in the Barcelona Grand Prix,” he says. “We’ve been friends ever since. We’ve only been together for a few months.”

Yuuri coughs and Viktor makes an amused noise.

“Friends?” Viktor asks with the deadly sweetness of a parent who is about to whip out the photo albums. Jamie feels a twinge of sympathy for him. “Is that what people call your exhibition skate these days, Yurio? Friendly?”

“Shut up.”

“Because I distinctly remember—”

“Shut up!” he’s turned beet red and even Otabek is blushing a deep red. “We are not talking about that.”

“But Yurio that was your first exhibition skate in the Senior Grand Prix, and by far the most memorable. You should tell your friends about it.”

“Tell us what,” Carla demands. “What are you talking about?”

Viktor opens his mouth but Yuri cuts him off.

“I know where you sleep.” He turns to Yuuri. “If you don’t want me to murder your husband right now, you will make him to shut up right now.”

Yuuri laughs and places a hand over Viktor’s mouth. The heart eyes are now off the charts.

“Noted,” he says. “So Carla, Yurio told me you demolished him at Mario Kart again last week…”

 

\--

 

After dinner, Yuuri slips Jamie a piece of paper with a small wink.

“We’ve never let him live it down,” he says.

 

\--

 

Jamie sends the video link to the entire gang which gets a lot of exclamation points and screaming emojis. Also a lot of glove emojis. To Yuri she texts four words. Yuri replies in full caps, with six words:

‘YOU ARE ALL DEAD TO ME’

 

\--

 

Jamie should have known that it wasn’t going to last. She has never been that lucky. She has never been lucky, period. Which is a shame; school is only a day away and she actually thought she’d manage to make it back after break without any problems.

“So I’ve been looking at your classes for this semester,” her mom says at dinner.

“ _You what?_ ”

“Why did you drop AP Chemistry, honey?”

“I hate Chemistry,” Jamie mutters. “I don’t understand any of it so what’s the point of taking it? I have enough AP credits anyway.”

“Jamie I know you’re having a hard time with Chemistry but you’re going to need it if you want to be a doctor—

“I’m not going to be a doctor, mom,” Jamie blurts out. An awkward silence falls on the table. Her mother is staring at her in open shock and disbelief.

“But I thought we talked about it and…”

“I’m not going to do it.”

Her mother sighs, like Jamie’s being irritating.

“You always do this. You find something hard and you give up without even trying. First it was figure skating and now this. You don’t even bother to _try_ —“

Jamie gets up abruptly and walks out of the dining room. She knows she should say something, explain herself, maybe tell her mom what she is going to do. She doesn’t do any of that. She gets up, leaves her plate unfinished. She goes to her room, locks the door, and collapses to the floor. There may have been a few tears here and there but nothing Jamie’s ever admitting to.

It’s not like she can explain them anyway, so she’s not particularly inclined to try. Her mom, as always, is right about everything.

 

\--

 

Yuri, for the first time in Jamie’s memory, is early to AP Chemistry. The seat right next to him is still empty; it wasn’t as bad as his first day but most of the school still gives him a wide berth. Jamie drops down right next to him and tries not to hate being there. He stares at her, dumbfounded.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. Jamie doesn’t look at him when she answers.

“I’m here to take Chemistry, dumbass,” she says. “Now shut up. I actually have to try and pass this stupid class.”

And that should have been the end of it.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course I needed to add a WTTM reference. There's nothing weird about that at all. It's not like I'm obsessed or anything *sweats nervously*
> 
> Comments are, as always, appreciated. Find me on tumblr at katsuki-nikifcrov.tumblr.com (ao3 please have mercy on me and let me have links)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm alive! I'm so sorry this chapter took so long but I have a semi-valid excuse, this time. The laptop I typed this on crashed and I lost the chapter halfway through. I re-did it on google docs and then, I lost connection to the Internet for a while, then an unusually stressful semester. It was hard, getting this chapter out. As I was writing it, I just had to stop a lot of times and just wonder, what on earth I'm talking about. I sort of lost the thread of it for a while because this fic was originally supposed to be just an outsider's PoV fic on our favorite figure skaters, but Jamie ripped it out of my hands and made it about her own story, that just happens to feature figure skaters, lmao. I adore that girl but I wasn't prepared for her presence to be as strong as it was. Anyway, it took a while, and I'm not entirely happy with some parts of it, but it's here now and you've probably waited long enough!
> 
> I just want to thank everyone's who's stuck with this story, who read, commented on, and bookmarked it. You are all awesome and I love you all so much. I had no idea this fic would have as much attention as it does, so thanks for making my day with all your wonderful comments :))
> 
>  
> 
> Without further ado, onwards!

Apparently to Yuri, that was most definitely not the end of it.

Jamie knows, of course, that Yuri is a persistent little shit who does not know how to let the smallest things go (His ongoing Mario Kart war with Carla is evidence enough of that. The last time Jamie checked, Yuri’s managed to win a total of five times out of fifty and he is definitely not satisfied with that.) but she never imagined it would be directed at her, and over  _ Chemistry,  _ of all things.

“Why are you still here?” he demands whenever she sits down right next to him, which is too much shouting for a morning class, in Jamie’s opinion.They have Honors Chemistry three days out of five and Jamie would’ve really liked to focus all of her attention on not banging her head against her desk in despair. Yuri’s constant poking and prodding is not helping. She’s thought of just switching seats with someone else, but hey, she’s not just about to spring the entirety of Yuri Plisetsky on someone else just so she can get a few moments of peace. Besides, she and Yuri are friends and friends have quirks. So what if this one is incredibly annoying and not at all good for her mental state? Jamie can deal with it.

Yes she can.

And so what if he makes Jamie want to skip this cursed class more than she already does? Most of the time, Jamie just sighs, takes out her notes, pointedly not looking at Yuri, and says in a tired voice, “Let it go, dude.”

Of course, Yuri doesn’t let it go. Yuri is incapable of letting anything go. The world may suddenly cease to exist if Yuri so much as let’s the tiniest thing go.

“You don’t even like this class,” he tells her on Friday.

“Well duh. We’re in high school. No one ever likes classes in high school.” No one really likes their classes, period. For some reason, this makes Yuri snort derisively. He has that snort down to a point. Jamie is suddenly struck with the image of Yuri practicing the art of snorting in front of a mirror. She won’t really put it past him.

“You’re wasting you’re time,” he says derisively on Monday.

“Well, you’re wasting yours.”

On Wednesday, he snaps. Jamie, on the other hand, barely manages to hold onto the last threads of her patience when she sees him standing by the door to their classroom, looking downright murderous. He catches her by the arm and drags her towards the opposite direction of where she has to go. Towards the exit.

“What the fucking hell, Yuri!”

“You’re not going back in that classroom if I have anything to say about it,” he growls.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Somewhere not here!”

“Uh, no. I’m not cutting classes, you idiot.”

Jamie tries to dig her heels in but to no avail. She tries to wrench her arm away but Yuri’s grip is remarkably tight. Figure skaters are too strong for their own fucking good. And he’s misusing that strength against her. There has to be some law against that.

“Stop it!,” she screams. “Stop it stop it stop it.”

Yuri finally stops. They’re at the school parking lot. It’s big enough that they’re not actually causing a commotion but the back of Jamie’s neck is still prickling from everyone’s attention that she knows  _ has  _ to be on her. He and Jamie just glare at each other--well, Jamie’s glaring, Yuri looks downright smug. A second passes, then two. Yuri is out of his fucking mind if he thinks Jamie is going to break first.

The bell rings.

Yuri lets go of Jamie, crossing his arms over his chest. Jamie’s fist clenches. She grits her teeth. No one’s staring, she tells herself. They’re all too busy trying to get to class to stare at her.

_ They are not staring at her. They’re not. _

“You’re an asshole, you know that?” she says. “Can you not figure out how to solve your problems in a non-assholish way? I thought we were past this stage.”

Yuri smirks which tells Jamie that no, apparently they have not passed this stage. Yuri is still going to be a world-class asshole that does world-class assholish things every other Monday because rules do not apply to him. Well, the world’s rules don’t apply to him; Jamie’s rules are another matter entirely and he has to fucking realize that if he wants to be her friend.

“You know what, fine, be that way.” Jamie gives him one last glare before turning on her heel to head back to the classroom. She hates walking in late to anything; feeling everyone’s eyes on her as the teacher frowns at her disapprovingly for disrupting the lesson, but skipping class is worse. Skipping class is having to live with the anxiety of both skipping and missing important stuff, and the knowledge that everyone knows you’re cutting class. And of course, they could possibly call her mom, too. And okay, Grove High definitely isn’t the most innocent of high schools, there are at least two people who cut in Jamie’s classes everyday, and they’re probably not going to call her mother over something so commonplace, but dammit the possibility is there and Jamie’s never been one for gambling.

“Why do you keep going to that class?” Yuri demands. Jamie freezes. “You’re being stupid and you’re wasting your time.”

“Shut up.” His voice is getting fainter by the second. If Jamie’s lucky, she’ll probably be able to tune him out soon. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I thought you were smarter than this,” he says, like he’s daring her to fight back. God, did he have to rub it in? He’s good at Chemistry and she’s not. It’s not like that wasn’t clear enough to everyone in their entire grade.

He’s daring her huh? Well bohoo for him. Jamie is infamous for ignoring dares.

“You know what,” Jamie says. “I’m not dealing with this bullshit today. Go find someone else to be an asshole to.”

She leaves Yuri to his own idiocy and assholishness. He doesn’t call her back, doesn’t even apologize, doesn’t even go after her to go to fucking class, because, to reiterate, he is a world-class asshole.

She ends up walking in five minutes late to class, and yeah, all eyes were on her when she did. She pointedly ignores all of them and hunches in her chair. She also very pointedly ignores the confused side glances is giving Yuri’s very, very empty chair. The guy’s an asshole but as far as Jamie can tell, he never skips without reason, and he always calls ahead first. Kind of hard to keep his skipping a secret especially since it’s usually connected to being an Internationally known figure skater. 

Apparently, Yuri considers dragging Jamie away from Chemistry to be a good enough reason. Because she was being stupid and wasting her time, he had said. Like actually attending your classes and trying not to fail them was a waste of time. Fucking idiot.

At this rate, the guy should just quit figure skating. He’s much better at being a world-class asshole.

 

\--

 

Yuri gives her a box of expensive chocolates the next time they meet. She doesn’t know where he got it, who helped him pick it out, or why he still thinks this is a good idea, and frankly, Jamie couldn’t really have cared less. She sighs when she sees it and resists the urge to throw it back at him with all the force she can muster.

“I thought I made it clear that you can’t bribe me with expensive gifts,” she says. “And I’m allergic to chocolates, moron.”

Yuri’s eyes widen and he hastily takes the box of chocolates back.

“Carla yelled at me,” he says. 

(It seems reasonable except for the fact that Jamie’s pretty sure she didn’t tell Carla about what Yuri did that Monday. It just further convinces Jamie that Carla is, in fact, omniscient.)

“Have any idea why?”

“I can think of a few things,” he says.

Jamie crosses her arms, expectant. They both know she’s not going to make the first move. Or at least she hopes Yuri knows. He has to at least know her well enough for  _ that. _

“What are you going to do about it, then?”

Yuri bows his head, actually looking contrite. He’s not meeting Jamie’s eyes, but at the same time, his hands are clenched into very tight fists. Fight or flight reaction, Jamie thinks. Yuri’s not used to not fighting something, and maybe that scares him. He doesn’t know a reaction other than charging straight at a problem and hoping it gives way. Bully for him that’s not the reaction Jamie’s looking for.

“I was horrible to you,” he mutters.

“You really were,” Jamie says. 

“I was--Beka talked to me about it. He says that I shouldn’t have pushed you.”

Jamie couldn’t really care less what Yuri’s boyfriend thinks right now. “And what do  _ you _ think?”

“I think he’s right.”

“Great. You figured out that you’re an ass. What do you want me to do about it?”

“I’m--”

“I know Yuri,” Jamie says. She is suddenly very, very tired of this conversation. “It’s fine. I get it. You’re not sure how people work yet. That’s fine. Let’s just never talk about it ever again. You don’t have to agree with what I do, hell you don’t even have to like them, but you don’t get to force me to stop doing those things and you sure as hell don’t get to drag me out of anywhere. Do you understand?”

Yuri stares at her for a long time, eyes sharp, like they’re trying to dig under Jamie’s skin and find… something. To be honest, Jamie’s not really sure what Yuri’s looking for. She’s not sure what he’s seeing is anywhere close to what’s really there; friends have a way of bending and re-shaping reality itself just to make their friends seem better and cooler than they actually are. She does her best not to buckle under his gaze.

Whatever he’s looking for, he seems to find, because he gives a slow nod, mouth set in a grim line.

“Good,” Jamie says. 

“And Jamie?” Yuri looks at her from underneath his eyelashes, strangely hesitant. 

_ “What?” _

“I could help you. With Chemistry, I mean. If you want to, that is.”

Jamie blinks. “I don’t need your pity,” she says.

“Not pity. You need help. I want  to help you.”

“Are you physically incapable of just letting things go?”

Yuri shrugs. Jamie officially gives up. Really, she doesn’t even know why she asked.

“Fine,” Jamie says. “Do what you want. It’s not like I can stop you.” He would probably shove worksheets in her bag and review notes in her locker if she tried. He’d probably spam her with videos of Chemistry tutorials he found on Youtube. Jamie shudders at the very thought.

“No,” Yuri says slowly, “you really can’t.”

 

\--

 

Somehow, she ends up getting roped into watching Yuri practice. Jamie won’t exactly consider herself a willing participant but hey, she’s not running away, either, so that’s something.

Otabek, or Beka, as everyone seems to call him, but Jamie doesn’t think they’ve reached that stage yet, is apparently training with Yuri until Worlds. Jamie doesn’t really get how that works but she’s willing to roll with it. Yuri texts them about his practices sometimes, somehow managing offhand and violent in an SMS, and tells them that they can come by the rink. Only if they want to, though. It’s not like he wants them there or anything. It’s not like he’d appreciate their presence or support.

Sometimes--or a lot of times--Yuri’s really a piece of work.

Carla looks surprised when she turns up at the rink. Jamie thinks she should feel offended but hey, she hasn’t been a particularly good friend to Yuri when it comes to skating.

Carla doesn’t ask, though, although Jamie can tell she wants to. That’s what makes her Jamie’s best friend.

“I’m not the one competing,” Jamie says with a shrug. “It’s not a big deal. Besides, Yuri said he’s going to tutor me in Chemistry after practice.”

It’s the most bullshit reason Jamie’s ever had to study Chemistry but Yuri insisted and she’s not stepping within a ten foot radius of that argument again for another twenty years, at least.Yuri seems satisfied and Jamie is very tired; it’s an arrangement that works  for the both of them.

“If you say so.”

“It’s not,” Jamie says. Carla gives her a Look and okay, she knows Jamie way too well. She’s been there through all of Jamie’s up and downs and that brief stint with figure skating was, admittedly, a pretty low point for Jamie. On the ice rink, Yuri and Otabek are warming up with compulsory figures. They’ve been doing that for a while now, though. They’ll be moving to more impressive things soon. “I’m dealing with it. Seriously. I wouldn’t have come if I couldn’t.”

“If you say so.” Carla does that sometimes. Just says ‘if you say so’ a lot to say in a roundabout way that she really does not agree with Jamie’s life choices. It’s alright. Jamie’s not sure she agrees with them, either.

“I do.”

Carla turns back to Yuri and Otabek. Yuri’s coaches are off to the side, watching the two of them with narrowed eyes. Jamie remembers that look. She hated seeing that look. Apparently, it hadn’t been an exclusive thing for her.

“I remember watching you doing those when we were kids,” Carla says with a laugh. “It drove me crazy.”

“It was the only thing I could actually do.”

“You could do some spins.”

“Badly.”

Carla laughs again. She puts an arm around Jamie’s shoulder.

“I know less than nothing about figure skating so who’s really counting?” she asks. Jamie turns back to Yuri and Otabek. They’re running through their programs now. Jamie doesn’t have the same eye for figure skating her mother does but she knows some things. She’d be an idiot not to. Yuri and Otabek are amazing, although there’s nothing particularly surprising about that. They’re internationally ranked figure skaters who are currently being coached by probably the only people who can beat them. It’d be a surprise if they’re anything less than spectacular.

Jamie thinks that she can get into the technicalities of it, if she wants--the inhumanly perfect position of Yuri’s Bielman spin or the height of Otabek’s triple axel--but she won’t, mostly because she  doesn’t want to. She doesn’t really remember much from figure skating. Mostly she remembers crying a lot. She’d been pretty young and she just… couldn’t do any of that. Not that kind of beauty and certainly not that kind of grace. She’s left that world a long time ago and hasn’t looked back since. She’s not particularly interested in doing it now.

“Do you ever think about the fact that we’re friends with Olympians?” Carla asks. “Like actual honest-to-god Olympians. I have World Lit with an Olympian. He hates Austen. Who the fuck hates Austen?”

Jamie thinks of Yuri dragging her out of the school out of a misplaced overprotectiveness. He thinks of how he still sits at the edges of the table but also casually steal from Michael’s plate and dumps food into Carla’s. How he still brings them ridiculously expensive gifts that no one really knows how to react to. 

(They went shopping with him once, right after he got home from Europeans. It was crazy. He bought things off designer racks like they were ramen noodles and he was a starving college student. Except he’s not a college student and he’s definitely not starving based from the bill that Jamie caught a glimpse of at the checkout counter.

Everyone had been staring. None of them were exactly poor but…

“Sponsors really, really like me,” Yuri says with a shrug when he catches their stares. “And I don’t do this often. I just won a gold medal. I deserve this.”

“You’re weird,” Jamie says.

Yuri rolls his eyes but doesn’t deny it.)

He’s teaching her Chemistry and he’s not actually half bad at it. It still makes no sense but he’s trying. An Olympian is teaching her Chemistry. That definitely wasn’t on her ‘things to do before she’s thirty’ list.

She thinks of how Yuri and Otabek are almost constantly on each other, not as bad as their coaches, but still. Otabek strokes Yuri’s head like he’s a cat and Yuri absolutely preens from the touch. They go out a lot, and have conversations on Twitter like they’re the only people there. It’s adorable. They hold hands and they kiss and they’re always together, like one body stretched out between two entities.  

They move like they’re running out of time, like they’re just one step away from losing everything. Each breath, each step, each thing, each kiss means something more than Jamie is used to seeing. They’re all a little bit unreal. 

On his first day at her school, Yuri kicked an asshole in the nuts and got away with it. Now, he’s still a bit of an asshole, but there’s something more there. Something Jamie’s not used to seeing. It almost makes her want to find out what it is.

“Yuri doesn’t really act like an Olympian,” she says.

“You know that we haven’t really met any other Olympians. They could all be like that.”

“Well I sure as hell hope they don’t act like Yuri. That’d be a nightmare. How would they even get anything done?”

The answer, of course, would be in the most extra way possible, with a determination that borders on madness. Probably with a lot of flashy costumes, too. 

“Well you know athletes,” Carla says, fighting to hide a grin. “They’re all divas. All that pressure.”

She and Carla share a look. A beat passes. Two, then three. They manage to get to four before they both burst into laughter. It’s easier than taking it seriously. Jamie makes it a personal mission not to take anything too seriously; life’s too short for that kind of bullshit. On the ice, Yuri executes a perfect quadruple salchow. Otabek is near the edges, talking with Viktor.

“But seriously,” Carla says. “Fucking unreal, man.”

That, in Jamie’s opinion, is probably a very good way to sum up the year.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I think I’m starting to get used to it.”

 

\--

 

“You’re driving, right?”

Yuri is already at the benches where Jamie and Carla had been watching, a towel draped over his neck. He looks mildly winded but not exhausted. Not exhausted enough to quit hounding Jamie on Chemistry, at any rate.

It still baffles Jamie to no end, how Yuri could possibly have the energy for anything after his practice, let alone tutoring. It’s still a mystery how he gets his homework done because  _ Jamie’s never seen him do it.  _ She wonders if all figure skaters never sleep, running on an inhuman amount of energy drinks and pure spite, or that’s just Yuri’s thing.

“Yeah,” Yuri says. Otabek is at his side, with an arm draped over his shoulder. Otabek is silent, but then, he usually is. Jamie is still having trouble believing the guy is a DJ, no matter how many mixes Yuri shows her. “Back to your house. Katsudon and his husband are riding with us. Try to ignore them being disgusting. And you.” He turns to Carla. “I can drop you off, too, if you want.”

Carla shrugs.

“I’m a block away dude,” she says. “I’ll walk. Good luck with Chemistry. Don’t really know how, but try to have fun, I guess?”

“Actually you can go without us,” Yuuri says. He appears from the rink office, breathless and a little bit disheveled. Jamie really doesn’t want to know what he’d been doing in there. “Viktor wants to try pair skating again.”

Yuri rolls his eyes but doesn’t say anything. His arm finds its way around Otabek’s waist and the four of them walk together to the parking lot. 

“Why do you call him Katsudon?” Jamie asks. “I never figured out why.” They all seem to like Katsudon but that’s mostly because it would be a sin not too, especially Yuuri’s Katsudon. It’s too amazing not to adore (It’s not as good as his mother’s, he keeps insisting, but then that’s what everyone’s says. Jamie thinks it’s unfair to compare anything you do with someone who has a good few decades more on you. The fight’s uneven and everyone knows it.). Still, it’s not exactly nickname material.

For some reason, this makes Yuri giggle. It’s a sound Jamie doesn’t quite hear often. It makes him seem younger than he tries to act, softer at the edges.

“He seduced Viktor by pretending to be Katsudon. I’m never letting him forget it.”

Otabek’s lips twitch up in what almost looks like a smile. Jamie sighs and rubs her forehead. She really doesn’t want to know about _that._

She tries to get rid of the mental image of a younger Yuri, witnessing their slow and incredibly painful (Yuri’s words) courtship, and feels a bit bad for him. No one really likes perfect couples flaunting how perfect they are, especially if you’re chuck full of hormones and bad decisions (again, Yuri’s words, said with a furious glare, daring anyone to ask. No one asks.) The only thing worse than that is, of course,  _ pining. _

(“I don’t want to talk about it,” Yuri said in a haunted voice. “It was only for a few weeks but…” he trails off, the look in his eyes the perfect picture of the “”war flashbacks” meme.

No. One. Asks. They’re not idiots.)

“You and your coaches are so weird,” she says.

“So weird,” Carla says. She turns to Otabek. “You seem normal. How do you deal with it?”

Otabek just smiles at her, fingers tightening around Yuri’s shoulder. He doesn’t talk much. Yuri shrugs carelessly.

“I think it’s figure skaters in general,” he says. “I’ve met weirder.”

“Otabek’s not weird.”

“It took me five years to talk to Yura,” Otabek reminds her. “And a day later I was biting off his glove.”

Jamie and Carla laugh because they are contractually obliged to laugh at the mental image. It’s right there, in the fine print of their friendship with Yuri.

“Point,” Carla says in-between giggles.

Jamie makes the conscious effort not to ask because there is definitely such a thing as too much information. She reminds herself that she does  _ not want to know. _

They get into the car together, with Otabek riding shotgun and Jamie in the backseat. Carla waves at them and tells Yuri that if he ever makes Jamie cry again, she will gut him. She looked dead serious when she said this. Yuri looks as if he completely believes her. Otabek’s eyes have disappeared to his hairline.

Carla walks away skipping, hair bouncing behind her back.

“You and Carla are terrifying, you know that?” Yuri says.

“We try.”

The car ride is mostly silent, which makes Jamie instantly suspicious. They’re not even playing music. Yuri’s grip on the steering wheel is tight. It’s not a long drive. It’s not a big neighborhood. The best thing that happened to them are probably three figure skaters turning up out of the blue and buying an ice rink.

They arrive at Jamie’s place after a few minutes. The car is unnaturally silent, which automatically puts Jamie on edge. Otabek is going to be the one taking Yuri’s car back to his house. He keeps glancing at her from the rearview mirror, looking almost nervous.

Jamie sighs. Apparently, this Argument isn’t finished.

(Yes, it deserves the capital A, just from the sheer effort Jamie is putting on not just automatically shutting down whenever Yuri brings it up.)

“You guys are so not subtle,” she mutters. “Just spit it out.”

It’s like someone turned a switch in Yuri. He says, “I know we agreed we’re not talking about it--”

“And that’s what we’re doing,” Jamie interrupts, “not talking about it.”

“Jamie--”

“Yuri.”

“Beka can you--”

Otabek nods. He presses a kiss to Yuri’s temple and opens the passenger door. Yuri drags Jamie out of the car and glares. 

“Don’t get angry,” Otabek says and Jamie’s not sure which one of them he was talking to. Yuri closes his eyes, takes a deep shuddering breath, and nods. They wait until he’s driven away before they continue their Argument.

“Is it just me,” Jamie says. “Or do I feel really cornered, right now?”

“I’m not going to attack you,” Yuri says. There’s a bite to his tone that only comes out when he’s annoyed; like actually annoyed and not just pretending to be annoyed because that’s his thing.

“It sure feels like it.”

“Jamie for fuck’s sake--”

“What do you want Yuri?”

"You’re making yourself miserable.” Yuri looks very angry about this, like Jamie’s misery is a personal offense to him. Maybe it is. He seems like the type to get upset over things like that. “Why?”

“Look this might be news to you, but you can’t actually stop me from making crappy choices. And taking Honors Chemistry isn’t actually the worst thing I could have done.”

“You cry in the bathroom stall after nearly every class.”

“ _ How the hell do you know about that? _ ”

Yuri’s wrong. She doesn’t cry  _ every  _ class, she’s not a wimpy crybaby and she’s used to things not going well. It’s just that sometimes, she really, really, really hates Chemistry. She’s used to hating lots of things though, and she won’t give up on this one.

“I know what people look like when they’re about to hide out and cry.”

“And what’s it to you?”

Yuri bites his lip, one of the first signs of hesitance that Jamie’s ever seen from him. “We’re friends. That’s what friends do, right? We help.”

Jamie is silent. That is what friends do. They help. Carla knows better than to talk to her about it by this point, but Jamie catches her looks. She’s been there since Jamie’s first failure. She knows enough about Jamie to not talk about it, just pick up the pieces when Jamie ultimately breaks. Yuri doesn’t know any of that. He’s new. He doesn’t know what helps and what hurts, just charges straight through and hopes he snags the right one.

“I always run away,” Jamie says. “You’re new here so you don’t know but that’s just who I am. I start something and I don’t finish them. I just give up. I never finish _ anything.  _ I want to finish this, to get something done for once in my life.”

Yuri looks curious, fascinated even. Angry but curious at the same time. It’s an odd look.

“Did you actually like any of them?” he asks.

“What? What does that have to do with anything?”

He shrugs. “You tried out figure skating when you were a kid, didn’t you? Figure skaters start young. Most of the ones in the International circuit have been skating since they were six? Seven? Most have been dancing even before that.”

“I know,” Jamie says.

“You practice and you train and you keep training,” Yuri says. “And at first it’s fun. It’s beautiful and you feel like you can be the greatest.”

“What’s your point?”

“That’s all a fucking a lie.” Yuri’s fists are clenched, looking ready to punch her, or whatever lie he believed when he first started skating. “You train and you skate and you spend a ridiculous amount of money on something that’ll fuck up your knees permanently and leave your entire body permanently bruised. And after all of that, you either lose early on, or you lose later on in your career, which is worse. That’s the first thing a kid learns: that no matter how hard you try, you’ll fall way more than you actually stay upright, and it doesn’t hurt any less the more you do, and it only gets worse the better you get. You’d have to fucking love it to stay on after all of that.”

It’s a weird way of looking at the world, Jamie thinks. Fighting and fighting and fighting and for what? Where does the fighting end? Where do you take all that pain, all the bruises and broken bones, all that passion that morphs into exhaustion, where does it go and where does it all  _ end _ ?

I didn’t learn it like that, she wants to say. In another life, she put on skates and never took them off, and maybe she and Yuri would see more eye to eye. In this one, she did and learned that there are things not worth fighting for. She learned to surrender.

Yuri learned to fight and it won him his medals, mountains and mountains of it, but Jamie had never been after medals. She hadn’t wanted to win at anything in a long time now. Most days, she’s still working on figuring out how to exist.

“Jesus Yuri,” she says. “I’m just trying to get through high school in one piece. It’s not that big a deal.”

“It is a big deal! You are running out of time. You only have so long before you’re old with a job in some ugly building,doing something boring and thankless. If you’re going to waste your time being miserable trying to finish something, at least make sure it’s something you actually like.”

Jamie swallows. Her eyes are burning. This is not a conversation she wants to have.

“That’s not the point,” she says. “We’re not--This isn’t--I’m not a figure skater.”

“No you’re not,” Yuri says. “But you could have been.”

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? She could have been. But she’s not. Because she hated it so much. Hated that she kept falling and falling and falling and the fact that she’s about as graceful as a newborn cow. There were a lot more things after that; she doesn’t really remember all of them. Music, some dance. Her mom had wanted to show her off and the last thing Jamie wanted in the world was to show off. Jamie doesn’t particularly like thinking about those years; too many tears, too many regrets.

“I could have tried harder,” she says. “I should have tried harder.”

Yuri sighs. 

“I’m not good at this,” he says. It’s said in a deadly whisper, like the mere thought of him not being good at anything is unthinkable therefore no one should think it. “This is---Katsudon is better with this crap. Otabek is better at this, hell even the old man is, but you got me. I’m here and I’m the one telling you you’re making a mistake.”

“You don’t get to decide that,” she says quietly. “You don’t.”

Jamie doesn’t say anything after that, just stares at Yuri, waiting for him to break. He doesn’t. The two of them are too stubborn for their own good. Time is a weird thing, Jamie knows this. There always seems to be too much of it until you look up and you’ve realized you’ve run out. Yuri knows this too. Like he said, you can only torture your body for so long before it gives up on you.

Jamie knows this too; knows it with an intimacy that is lost on most people. Always too low on patience and not enough drive. Pulled into a thousand different directions and pulling and pulling at everything around her until she feels like she can no longer move, like she’s being ripped apart. How was she supposed to know what to do when she doesn’t even know if she’s going anywhere at all?

Yuri would die for figure skating, would let it pull him downwards and downwards until there’s no clawing back out. Jamie wonders if she’ll do that for anything.

Everything has to go someplace at the end of the day; nothing really stays the same. Where are they going, when everything is said and done?

“Yuri,” she says. She’s tired and she’s tired of pretending she’s a fighter. “I think we should get to work now.”

Yuri whirls around, eyes burning. Jamie pretends not to notice, just makes the slow, heavy journey towards the door.

 

\--

 

They don’t talk about it again. 

Days pass and she catches him watching her sometimes. Everyone does. Jamie’s sinking and she knows it. She doesn’t know where to yet, if she’s finally going to find the ground under her feet or if she’ll just drown.

Jamie watches Yuri skate as often as she can, mostly to prove to herself that she can. It’s a terrifying thing, seeing all his rage, all his anger translated onto the ice. There’s a lot of other things there, too, like love, loyalty, faith. Yuri’s a lot of things, and fiercely determined is one of them. He doesn’t pour his soul onto the ice so much as he carves his heart out of his chest and crushes it for all its worth, teeth bared and eyes full of fire.

She’s never going to have that kind of determination, she thinks. It’s not a thing in her and she doesn’t know why Yuri expects it to be. He holds things to such high standards sometimes that maybe he doesn’t know that other people don’t; other people just want to get through their lives in one piece.

Maybe it’s a pointless existence but it’s existence and it shouldn’t matter any less.

“He’s very good, isn’t he?” Otabek appears out of nowhere and sits down right next to her. Jamie nearly jumps. He’s pretty light-footed. There’s a water bottle in his hand and a fond smile on his lips. It makes him seem younger, like he’s not in college already.

“I hear he’s the best,” Jamie says.

“For now.”

She and Otabek don’t talk. They’re not really friends. Maybe they’re too different or just too quiet to bridge those differences. She hasn’t strangled him yet, but maybe that’s just because she hasn’t done anything with him yet. They’re not quite friends. Not yet.

She remembers the way he looked at her, back in the car, with the same immovable determination that Yuri has. Jamie barely has any left in her bones. She’s tired.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says. “I’m tired of  _ thinking  _ about it. So if that’s why you’re here, you should just shut up.”

"I’m not,” Otabek says. “What do you want to talk about?”

Jamie shrugs. “I don’t know. Nothing. Anything. It doesn’t matter. Talk about anything you want.”

“I like music,” Otabek offers.

“Yuri told me you were a DJ too.”

“I am.”

The two of them are a little awkward and a lot stilted. Jamie turns back to Yuri. From the looks of it, he’s shouting down his coaches. From the looks of it, they’re not taking his shouting to heart at all.

“What made you fall for Yuri?” she finds herself asking. It’s not that Jamie thinks he’s hard to love, but sometimes, he makes it impossible to want to stay. “What made you want to be with him?”

“He knows what he wants and he goes after it, no matter what, even if it’s impossible,” Otabek says. His eyes are dark, serious, trained on Yuri like he can’t look away. “We understand each other. We’re a lot alike.”

Jamie snorts. “Yeah you are,” she says. Otabek is just quieter about it, but they’re both reaching for something they can’t have. It’s a kind of bravery Jamie doesn’t really know, but it’s bravery and it shouldn’t matter less.

It shouldn’t matter more either.

“Jamie?”

“Hmm?”

“What do you want to do?”

Somehow, Jamie thinks that he’s not talking about dinner plans.

Jamie is getting very, very tired of explaining herself. They mean well but everyone, from her mom to Carla to Yuri and now Otabek, always asks her why and what and Jamie is tired of not having the right words to tell them to mind their own business and let her live her life. She is here and her choices are hers and she doesn’t know why she has to keep justifying them.

“You know that some people don’t really want to do anything, right? They just want to  _ be. _ It’s not--Not everything has to have a point, not everything has to be for a gold medal, alright? Sometimes people do stuff because it makes people around them happy, or because everyone else is doing it, and sometimes people do things because they do them. No reason, just because. Not everything needs a reason; it doesn’t always have to lead anywhere. Hell, it doesn’t even have to make you happy, but sometimes it just is and you do what you need to do. I like it like that.”

“I hated ballet,” Otabek says quietly.  _ Preach, _ Jamie thinks. She doesn’t really remember much from her brief stint there, only that she had hated it with ever fiber of her being. “Figure skaters are practically required to know ballet but I was so horrible at it. You know I first met Yura at ballet but he didn’t remember me because I wasn’t memorable. I was horrible and at some point it seemed pointless. I wasn’t going anywhere.”

“My mom wanted me to be a figure skater, you know?” Jamie takes a deep breath. This is something she’s never really told anyone. Carla doesn’t count. She figured it out on her own and pretends to believe Jamie’s stories anyway. “Like, your kind of figure skater, the one winning medals and shit. I was in ballet for a long time and took lessons, even got Junior certification. I wasn’t bad, really, but I hated it so much that it showed. I fell and the spins sucked because I wanted to be anywhere but there. I tried to tell my mom but she wouldn’t listen, kept saying that I’ll learn to love it if I just try hard enough. I wanted to quit so bad and she wouldn’t let me so one day I just stopped trying.”

Jamie doesn’t really like thinking about those years in middle school where she was crashing and burning and taking everyone down with her. She doesn’t remember much of it at this point, only that she cried a lot, tucked under her covers muffling her sobs every night and skating with her head pounding from exhaustion every day. She doesn’t remember skating, only falling over and over and over again.

She remembers giving up; not stopping just… giving up. And eventually, everyone else gave up on her and skating faded into dust. They’re better now, but it’s still there at the edges of her mom’s not-quite smiles. Jamie can never quite forgive her mom for putting her through all of that.

Years and years of people telling her to be more than what she was, ending with Jamie having a break down at the rink and her coach giving up on her with recommendations for a therapist.

She could never really forgive herself for dragging everyone down with her, either.

… And after that are the years of people telling her she should be happier than what she is. Telling her that she’s smart and that she has a bright future ahead of her. Telling her how to be happy, laying out plan after plan on how to be a doctor or a lawyer or an artist or how to be whatever she wants, until all of it had closed in around Jamie, tightening around her skin until she could barely breathe.

At some point, Jamie just got sick of people forgetting that she already is; that she’s still here. She exists. She doesn’t need a distant future career, a good job or a to-do list of her life to  _ be. _

“I know what you’re all thinking and you’re all wrong, you know.” Disappointment is a bitter pill to swallow and Jamie tastes it every time she looks in her mom’s eyes; a hundred could-have-beens that Jamie so carelessly threw away. “People have this stupid notion that they can make me do something I don’t want. You all are fighting to be for this title, for success, and that’s cool. Do what you want. But I’m just fighting for people to let me be. No one gets to decide how and what makes me happy but me.

“Do you want to know a secret? I didn’t take Chemistry to make my mom happy. I took it because I don’t want to let it go yet. I hate every second of it but I’m not letting go, not until I know I have nothing left to give.”

A thousand things, turned to dust and fading away and Jamie had done nothing. She’s trying something different this time, if people would just let her. They don’t get to decide how she chooses to be happy.

Tears are inconsequential. Yuri’s right when he said that Chemistry makes her cry but at the end of the day, Jamie’s use to crying. She’d shed a gallon of tears if it meant that people would just shut up and stop telling her how to be happy.

On the rink, Yuri tries another jump but it’s clear that he’s exhausted. He fucks up the take-off and lands on his face.

“You and Yura,” Otabek says, and there’s a hint of  _ something  _ in his voice; something Jamie’s never quite heard before. Something that sounds almost like fondness. “You’re not very different, either.”

Jamie snorts. “If only he’d realize.”

“You have tried, though,” Otabek says after a long pause. “Trying means trying, not finishing.”

She doesn’t answer. She couldn’t, even if she wanted to.

 

\--

 

Jamie goes home that night, and stares at her desk. Stares at an acceptance letter that’s not what her mother wants. Stares at the smattering of trinkets she’s collected from her friends. There’s a lot of her in it, A lot of who she wants to be and who she could never be. She has friends, she knows this. People who love her, and people who care, and people who are trapped in the in-between of that.

The truth is, she’s spent a lot of time pretending she wasn’t who she was. There are people like Yuri who are so completely themselves that they can’t really be anything else, Jamie thought she could be something better than who she is. Or someone people thought she should be. She never really considered who she thought she should be.

Maybe she needs to find the in-between of that. 

She takes a deep breath and decides.

 

\--

 

‘I’m done,” Jamie says at breakfast. “After exams, I’m not doing this ever again.”

Her mom looks up, brow furrowed in confusion.

“What are you talking about, darling?” she asks.

“This,” Jamie says. “Chemistry. Medicine.  _ This. _ ”

Her mother is staring at her, eyes wide. “What do you mean--”

“I’m not going to be a doctor and after I graduate, I’m probably not going to take another science course in my entire life.” Jamie gets up from the table slowly and picks up her bag. She’s tired and she’s tired of being tired. “I tried. I gave everything and I hated it. I’m done. I don’t have anything left to give.”

The words are ripped out of her like a shrapnel wedged near her heart, leaving her exhausted and empty. It’s a good kind of empty, though. She bled for this, draining the doubt within her and now, she can be filled with something new. Something different.

“But you were doing so well. I had thought--” Her mom cuts herself off, looking lost.

“I was. And I hate it. It’s pointless.”

“And what are you going to do? Where are you going to go?”

She shrugs. “Somewhere,” she says, and that has to be enough.

If Jamie’s completely honest, she still doesn’t know what she’s going to do after this. She doesn’t know how she’s going to come home after school later and look her mom in the eye. She doesn’t even know what she’s going to do in college once she’s there. She doesn’t really know what she wants but that doesn’t matter. She has time. She’ll figure it out eventually. She’s not finished yet.

What she does know right now, however, is what she doesn’t want.

“I’m done, mom,” she says. “And honestly, I don’t really care what you think about it.”

She turns and walks away, the door closing quietly behind her. She takes a deep breath, then another, then another. It’s going to get better, she thinks, because it has to. Deep breaths come, one after another.

“Jamie!”

Her head snaps up and Carla is there, in Yuri’s car along the pavement, along with Michael and Alex.

“I’m not waiting for you,” Yuri shouts.

“I’m coming,” Jamie says. She breathes. “I’m coming.”

 

 

 

_ \--fini-- _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may or may not be writing a Victuuri sequel to this. 
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](http://katsuki-nikifcrov.tumblr.com) if you want to talk or fangirl :D

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: This is actually the first time I used an OC as a main character for a fic. So um, how'd I do?
> 
> Anyway I have a [tumblr](http://katsuki-nikifcrov.tumblr.com) if you want to talk to me about stuff :)


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